# senator daniel inouye who represented hawaii died last week of respiratory complications. harry reid has called on hawaii's governor neil abercrombie to appoint a successor before the end of the year. ted kennedy jr., son of the late edward kennedy is considering a run for john kerry's senate seat according to his brother, former congressman patrick kennedy. the "boston globe" reports that ted reached out to family members, friends and prominent democrats including john kerry about the possible run. he would most likely face off against former senator scott brown who lost his seat to elizabeth warren in the november elections. thank you so much for watching today. i'm candy crowley in washington. head to cnn.com/so it tu for analysis and extras if you missed any part of today's show, find us on itunes, search state of the union. from all of us we want to wish you a merry christmas.

"fareed zakaria gps" is next for our viewers in the united states. this is "gps" the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. on the show today, we'll move past the fiscal cliff and talk about the real challenges to the economy. i will talk to the chief economic adviser of the romney campaign glen hubbard, and president obama's former budget czar peter orszag, among others. also, let me tell you about the biggest success story in latin america. it is not brazil. it's actually much closer to home. then, as the world watches the arab world struggle with democracy, we'll take a look at the problem from an unusual perspective, upside down. how does a country turn away from democracy as eastern europe did 50 years ago? i'll talk to pulitzer-prize winning historian ann applebalm. we focus on decision making. in the depths of the financial crisis, the obama administration

had an almost impossible choice -- save chrysler by injecting billions of taxpayer dollars, or let it fail and lose perhaps a million jobs. car czar steve rattner gives us a fascinating inside look. for viewers in the united states, we have a special tonight at 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. eastern and pacific called "tough decisions." but, first, here's my take. announcing that he would send proposals on reducing gun violence in america to congress, president obama this week mentioned a number of sensible gun control measures. but he also paid homage to the washington conventional wisdom about the many and varied causes of this calamity from mental health issues to school safety. his spokesman jay carney said earlier this is a complex problem that will require a complex solution. gun control, carney added, is far from the only answer. let me respectfully disagree.

the problem is not complex and the solution is blindingly obvious. there are three sets of causes that people point to when talking about events like the one in newtown. first, the psychology of the killer. second, the environment of violence in our culture. and third, the easy access to guns. each of these might explain any single event, but what we should be trying to understand is not one single event, but why we have so many of them. let's look at the facts. according to the u.n.'s office on drugs and crime, the u.s. gun homicide rate is 30 times that of france or australia. it is 12 times higher than the average for other developed countries. why is that? if psychology is the main course, we should see that we have 12 times as many psychologically disturbed people as the oecd average. we don't. in fact, america takes mental disorders seriously, treats them and doesn't stigmatize them. we do better in this area than most of our peers. is america's popular culture

much worse than other rich countries? not really since it's largely the same popular culture worldwide. england and wales, for example, are exposed to virtually identical cultural influences as the u.s. yet, their rate of gun homicide is some 3% of ours. the japanese are at the cutting edge of the world of video games, yet the u.n. puts their gun homicide rate at close to zero. why? well, they have one of the most restrictive series of gun laws in the world. when looking internationally, it is obvious that the one feature of america that would explain why we have so much more gun violence than the rest of the world is that we have incredibly permissive laws allowing the sale and possession of guns. with 5% of the world's population, we have 50% of the world's guns. we also have evidence that tightening laws, even in high

videoistic countries with traditions of gun ownership, can and does reduce gun violence. in australia after a 1996 ban on all automatic and semiautomatic weapons, a real ban, not like the one we did in 1994 which had 600 plus exemptions, after that ban, gun-related homicides dropped by 59% over the next decade. all the evidence points in the same direction. there will always be evil or disturbed people and they might be influenced by some violent popular culture. but how is the government going to identify the darkest thoughts in people's minds before they do anything? what government can do easily, however, is make it much harder for these people to have access to guns. a few hours before the newtown murders, a man entered a school in the province in china, obviously, mentally disturbed, he tried to kill as many children as he could.

but all he had access to was a knife. the result, despite many injured, not one child died. the problems that produce the newtown mas ker. are not complex nor are the solutions. we do not lack for answers. what we lack in america today is courage. for more on this take a look at my "washington post" column. you'll find it on cnn.com/fareed. let's get started. so, let's get right to it. a conversation about the real economic problems this country faces. on my right and on the right, glen hubbard, the former chief economic adviser of the romney campaign and dean of the business school. on my left, peter orszag, obama former budget director and sort

of in the middle, zanny minton beddoes and chrystia freeland, be editor of routers digital. i promised we were going to get past the cliff. but i have to ask a few questions about it. just this. you don't think it's that big of a deal if we go over the cliff. >> i don't think it's that big of a deal if we get to january 3rd or january 4th and we don't have an agreement because we'll have one very soon after. if we did nothing for months, it would be disastrous. not only the combination of tax increases and spending cuts push the economy into a recession, the debt ceiling would be reached and at some point the u.s. would be unable to pay its bond holders. so that would be a catastrophe. because it would be such a catastrophe, i don't think it would happen. >> glenn, you would agree with that. if we went over for a week or two, the pro rated tax increase, the taxes going up for a week or two and spending cuts for a week, it wouldn't have much effect on the economy. >> it's not a big deal. but the uncertainty it creates, as zanny said, is allowed to

stand, both sides actually may have agendas a little easier if we went off the cliff. republicans can do tax reform more straight forwardly and the president can do his own version of tax policy and spending policy but that would have to be done quickly. >> peter, you write that you want the discussion, the deal to be tax hikes and entitlement reform. do you want it to be more comprehensive than that or are those the two key elements? >> at this point, those are the two key elements. one is necessary for resolving the fiscal cliff. the other is necessary for getting a significant debt limit increase. we need to do both. i agree, we'll have a deal by mid to late january by the latest. the risk in all of that is, it's going to be kind of a half-hearted deal. there's an opportunity here to do a much bigger, much more ambitious deal and that is what i think we should be seeking. >> that deal would be tax reform plus entitlement reform or how important do you think this whole idea of comprehensive tax reform is?

>> i think comprehensive tax reform is desirable and easier to say and hard to do. in the meanwhile, useful from my perspective to lock in some additional revenue to help on the medium term deficit. >> there are people on the left like paul krugman that say in this whole idea of comprehensive tax reform unleashing economic growth is nonsense. is that -- >> most of the evidence suggests that there is some benefit from a more sensible tax code. i think in 2013 itself, we have larger problems in the sense of inadequate demand, but i think it's hard to argue that we wouldn't do somewhat better with a more sensible tax code. >> one piece that you've been pushing is a consumption tax as part of this comprehensive tax deal. you know that a lot of economists think it is a good idea. we should tax consumption and get the savings rate up. it seems politically dead on arrival. i think paul volcker mentioned it and in response, 96 senators passed a sense of the senate resolution that this was an evil idea.

>> here's the way i think about it. we're not going to get a consumption tax in this discussion this year or next spring either. the reason it's inevitable, on the republican side, it is the way to slowly do tax reform. peter's right, reforming the income tax is very, very hard. it is also the only way to pay for a larger government, if that's what the american people want. >> what really matters now, that republicans have moved on taxes somewhat, is that we have some movement on entitlements. not because it is necessary for next year or even five years' time, if you look out over two decades, that's where the u.s. needs to do something. that's where the president has a huge opportunity. he's got movement from the republicans. i suspect there will be movement, not just on deductions but on rates. that argument is over and now show leadership on entitlements and take on some sense the left of your own party and put out something bold there. >> peter, do you worry, the democrats do seem to have suddenly circled the wagons on entitlements in a way they

hadn't a year ago. this is going to be defended at all costs. >> and i think, ultimately, that a will be a mistake, if that's not just positioning and posturing, but is the actual underlying, you know, bottom line. the reason is, coming back to something zanny said, several thoughts. first, the democrats have leverage now. they can reform these programs in a way that is progressive and puts them on sounder, long-term footing. that's a big plus. second, the more you do in long-term entitlements, the less pressure on fiscal austerity in 2013, which is harmful for the economy and also the less pressure you're putting on discretionary spending. so, relieving some of that pressure and simultaneously not only having a massive accomplishment in terms of a legacy, but also doing so in a progressive way strikes me as win/win. >> good point. the irony is that the democrats have doubled down on a position that says let's don't adjust the

benefits of the well off. an irony while we're talking about a tax debate on the well off, the president is essentially saying, don't touch. >> i think that this is an easy conversation to have, if it's in sort of geek wonkland. >> speak for yourself. >> this is wonkland. recall it wonk land. >> speak for yourself. i think of you as wonderfully wongish, fareed. it's one of your fine qualities. # but i think what we're leaving out is how intensely politicized this debate has been. it seems as if america has been so bruised by the fighting of the past four years and the american democratic party, especially the left because i think peter speaks of american democratic centrist who want movements on entitlements, but i think the left of your party is feeling right now like we won in 2012. we fought over these issues. our constituency, the middle class and the working class are getting screwed in the u.s. economy right now. and we are not going to make concessions. i think that's the logic.

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[ male announcer ] stop the uh-oh fast with kaopectate. and we are back with glenn hubbard, zanny minton beddoes, peter orszag and chystia freeland talking about the economy. glen when you look at it, taking off your romney hat and putting on your columbia dean hat on, what does the american economy look to you? encouraging signs, housing is moving up and the shale gas revolution and energy gas revolution and unemployment remains persistently high. >> first, we have to focus on that. unemployment being this high is not just an economic problem, it's a social problem. we have to fight it. policymakers need to do even more to make sure that the ban is there in the economy. >> what does that mean? >> to me that would be a more sensible resolution of the budget deal so that we have less austerity today, but a glide path toward much more austerity in the

future. >> would you be in favor of a stimulus today? >> i think it depends on what you mean by a stimulus and in what form. we have to talk about the short-term economy. you asked about how the u.s. looks. to me, if you looked around the world and said you can only pick one country's opportunities and problems to own, what would you want? unquestionably for me, it is the united states. >> would you agree with that? >> think about energy, tech, innovation potential, this country's demographics, this is the country i would want to be. >> i completely agree with everything that glenn said. in fact, i'm surprised at your support for the short-term cushioning. i welcome it. that's great. i think it's absolutely right. in the short-term, boost the growth rate and get growth up and i think a sensible nondra coney fiscal deal is part of that and then to get to the unemployment. the unemployment rate is the most important thing and growth is part of that, but i think that's not enough. you know, i think the u.s. has, we can argue about whether it's structural unemployment or not.

but there are a number of people, cohort of people for whom they don't have the skills that are necessary in the new economy. if you look across the u.s. at training programs, a plethora of them, they are not very well coordinated and they don't work very well. disability needs to be reformed. a lot of people go on to disability and one-way ticket to never working, again. a whole host of things in the sort of labor market area that i would love this country to be focusing on. i hope once we get beyond the fiscal we can do that. >> one of the big challenges. we have a population that is expensive and the skills are not quite where they should be and either we're going to get the skills up or the price of labor is going to come down and we're going to get paid less and less. when you look at this issue of training, everyone talks about it. when you were in government, the germans seem to do it pretty well, the northern europeans do it, we do spend a fair amount of money on it. let's say the president is going to say to you i would spend three times as much on job training, do you think we know

what to do? >> i think there's a lot that could be done. it involves education, it involves investing in infrastructure which we should be doing and, frankly, i think all of that would take time. the best thing we can do to make up for the $750 billion a year whole in labor compensation that has arisen because of technological change is ring as much of the waste out of health care as possible. workers take home pay suffers by that amount. >> i had health care written down here and that was the elephant in the room we didn't talk about when we talked about government spending right now. i know peter has worked on it really hard. but something that is really sad for me looking forward about the u.s. economy is a lot has been done. i think even morally, it's terrific that americans are going to be covered. but the system hasn't really been rationalized and that is a big drag on the u.s. economy. if i could -- >> i think there is much more

progress that is being made, not just because of policy, but because insurance firms are pushing this way and insurance firms are pushing this way moving from fee for service payment and moving towards a digitized smarter health care system and i am hopeful, actually, more hopeful than conventional wisdom, i want to be clear about that. that by 2020 we'll be in a much better place on health care value than we are today. glen agrees with that. >> i think we need some tax and some insurance changes, but i agree with that. >> in 2020 -- >> that's not the problem, getting more out of it. >> exactly. we shouldn't care whether we spend 16 or 20 if we're getting great value. the question is, we are not getting great value. >> if you put all of this together, you have a pretty upbeat for the economy as a whole. for the next five years. the shale gas, the health care improvements. >> housing. >> housing. >> you say in your demographic is not as good as people think it is. >> well that is one of the new things people are saying about

the united states, is that the u.s. has historically kind of bragged about itself compared to other western economies that, you know, here the birth rate was still really high, compared to western europe. and recent data shows that something really surprising has happened, which is the new immigrants, especially hispanics who were the source of that robust fertility have stopped having as many children. yeah, i do think medium term that's a real issue, just as it is an issue for western europe and a lot of asia. that's part of the reason that this whole entitlement issue looms so large is the cohort coming in to work to support the older people and getting smaller. >> older americans to keep working which we can do through social security reform. >> and how about other crintives for women to have kids. >> all of these are good discussions. >> the french do it. the russians will give you a -- >> in france it's working and sweden it's working. >> okay, final word. >> to tie the two parts of this conversation together, this country spends ever more on old

people, if it doesn't reform entitlements and it needs to shift that spending to younger people and all the other good things we talked about will come together and then the future looks pretty rosy for the u.s. >> your suggestion is parents should get a half vote for each child under 18. >> i think that and the consumption tax are not going to happen. glenn hubbard, peter orszag, chrystia freeland thank you for joining us. up next, what in the world, a grand bargain of sorts that is in north america but not in the united states. details right after this. searching for a bank designed for investors like you? tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 schwab bank was built with all the value and convenience tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 investors want. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 like no atm fees, worldwide. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and no nuisance fees. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 plus deposit checks with mobile deposit. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and manage your cash and investments tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 with schwab's mobile app. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550

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now for our what in the world segment. last week the president told a newspaper the solution to partisanship is politics and more politics. that's how you work towards the building of agreements. unfortunately, it wasn't barack obama, it was mexico's enrique pena nieto. as washington has been mired in gridlock this year, consider what's happening just across the border.

one of the first things he did after assuming office just weeks ago was to announce pact for mexico, an ambitious set of reforms to raise taxes, increase che competition, take on the teachers unions. it's one thing to announce a plan, quite another to get support for it. his pack comes with endorsements from across the spectrum. the conservatives he ousted from office, as well as the leftist democrats. while the world has gotten used to drug-related violence from mexico, another side of this country has been quietly developing. consider the facts. mexico's gdp is expected to grow by nearly 4% this year. twice as fast as brazil or for that matter, the united states. it is riding a manufacturing boom. mexico is now the world's fourth biggest exporter of cars, according to the world trade analyst.

starting next year, new taxis in new york city will carry a made in mexico label. mexico is the top exporter of flat screen tvs. in fact, mexico exports more manufactured products than all the other countries in latin america combined. three main factors are in play. for one, geography. sharing a border with the united states means heavy products are cheaper to transport across than if they were manufactured in asia. the second factor is nafta, north american free trade agreement, mexican products are subject to lower duties than those from other countries. in fact, the economist points out that mexico has trade deals with 44 countries, the most of any nation in the world. the third factor is wages. as other manufacturing hubs become more expensive, mexico has become more competitive. according to hsbc in 2000 mexican workers earned nearly five times the salary of their chinese peers. but by 2011, mexican workers were only about a third more expensive than chinese workers.

when you project all these advantages into the next few years, mexico's economic future looks robust. the national intelligence council released an important report called "global trends 2030. one of the trends it looks at is how demographic changes will shape the world. countries with younger, more dynamic populations will grow faster. while the median age in mexico will be 30, 40, japan's median age will hit 52. america actually has an advantage here at 39. our median age will only be five years older than that of mexico's. trends don't ensure particular outcome, but it's clear that contrary to its global image, mexico's economy has momentum. it will be among the world's top ten economies by the end of this decade. smart reforms can build it further. the irony is that one possible

impediment to mexico's growth could be the very country that is its biggest asset, the united states. if we slow down, so will mexico. but perhaps that can be avoided if washington's polarized factions could agree on a way forward. maybe we need to take some lessons from south of the border. up next, the inside story on a tough controversial decision. why the obama administration bailed out the auto industry. i'll speak with steve rattner, the president's lead adviser on the bailout. sure you can. great. where's your gift? uh... whew. [ male announcer ] break from the holiday stress. ship fedex express by december 22nd for christmas delivery. welcome to chevy's year-end event. so, the 5.3-liter v8 silverado can tow up to 9,600 pounds? 315 horsepower. what's that in reindeer-power? [ laughs ] [ pencil scratches ]

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what would you do if in the midst of a global recession the fate of over a million jobs rested with you and a few others? four years ago that was the question facing steve ratner, a private equity fund manager named president obama's car czar, the chief adviser to the president, on the fully formed auto task force. it was early 2009 that the dow jones had recently had its largest single day point drop. 2.6 million jobs had been lost and banks and businesses were frequently failing. few companies were as battered as the big three automakers and

in january of that year alone, gm sales were down 49%, ford's down 40% and chrysler sales had fallen 55%. a very tough decision had to be made, extend a lifeline with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to the auto industry or let it run its own course. "tough decisions" is the latest gps special. viewers in north america can watch it tonight on cnn at 8:00 and 11:00 p.m. eastern and pacific. right now, steve rattner takes us inside the decision to save chrysler. >> it was unbelievably scary. i would literally wake up in the middle of the night and say to myself, not to be self-aggrandizing the future of the car industry could rest on my shoulders. we were making decisions every day that dwarfed any decisions i had ever had to make previously in terms of the amount of money, the number of people involved and the consequences of getting the decisions wrong. had no idea what we were going to do.

i was not a car guy. we inherited nothing from the bush administration. no files, analysis. we literally walked into an empty room, sat down, and took out our pencils and said, now what do we do? >> when you looked to the companies, did they look at you? >> certainly they were all overledged, too much debt. they had way too much capacity, there was no way they would need the overhead they had. thirdly as we got into the due diligence process they were not well managed. particularly general motors. i had this idea general motors as one of the great icons of american industry and one of the worst managed companies i had ever seen in my professional career. >> you are looking at it from the point of view from the government. what do you think about what your options are? >> really only two choices with both general motors and chrysler. put money and save them in some sort of restructuring or watch them liquidate and close their doors and fire all their

workers. those were their two choices. the general motors went bankrupt, if we mean bankrupt, it would have brought down the car industry because if general motors would have gone, the suppliers would have gone. if suppliers were gone, ford would not be able to get parts for its cars. my guess now is it would have been over a million jobs lost in essentially a nano second. the real decision, the really tough decision we had to make was over chrysler because chrysler was a marginal player. it was the number three car company in the u.s. it did not have a single car on the consumer reports recommended list. it had no operations of any consequence outside the u.s. and so, a classic approach would be to say failing companies should fail and why shouldn't chrysler fail? on the other hand, we knew that if chrysler were allowed to fail on day one, something like this 300,000 people would lose their jobs, including the dealerships and so on, the suppliers across america. and that's a huge number of jobs, obviously. so, this was the, this was the toughest decision we had to make

in the whole process was, could chrysler be saved? even if it could be saved, should it be saved? >> the way the process worked. interesting, a meeting in the white house where it was almost like the two sides presented their best case. >> it was exactly like that. look, larry summers is a professor and loves -- he was a debating champion in college. he loves the arguments. so we sat in his tiny little office which looked like it had been renovated in the 1950s, hours for hours around his little table and there were two really well argued strong points of view. one, that it should be saved for all the reasons i tried to spell out and the other that this is a time to let a company go. and gm and ford would ultimately be the beneficiaries of it. >> there was an actual vote? >> larry was big on democracy up to a point so there were votes. it got to 4-4. i had not yet voted. i said some things on one side

and some things on the other side and i was really torn and larry said, all right, steve, what do you want to do? i thought and i thought and i said to myself, you know, if chrysler can be saved at this moment in the economy, even though it does trouble me on some level, it's the right thing to do. i think we should save it. so, that made it 5-4. larry was quietly in favor of saving it, which was relatively obvious to all of us. but then we went down to see the president. we have the first meeting in the oval office and we go around and around and the president hadn't really been prepared for this meeting. it was a little bit haphazard, frankly. at the end, his assistant comes in and says, you've got to go, mr. president. he said look, i'm not going to make this decision on the fly, let's get together again tonight. we go into the roosevelt room and do the whole thing all over again. the president is very good at listening to both sides. everybody has a chance to speak, if they haven't spoken he calls on them. in the end, he puts his head in his hand and he said, i made my decision. if chrysler can be saved and be made profitable, again, then that is the right thing to do. >> looking back, do you think it

was the right decision? >> absolutely because chrysler, oddly enough, is doing much better than we ever expected. one of the things that i learned from this experience is anybody can call plays from the grand stand. throughout this process i was reading the papers about somebody saying, well, they should do this, i got a lot of e-mails. it is very easy to say that stuff when you're not actually having to make the decisions. when you're sitting there, as the president was, as larry summers was and i in a smaller way was, be and you actually have to make these decisions, you focus on the essential core of it and get down to the essence of it and say what is the right decision to make this come out the best way possible? you strip away the rest of it. that was my conversation with steve rattner. remember, you can watch our latest special "tough decisions" tonight at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. eastern. don't miss it. up next, a fascinating look at communism. how it seduced so many governments in the last century.

the pulitzer price winning author anne applebaum joins me. . and some difficult ones. but, through it all, we've persevered, supporting some of the biggest ideas in modern history. so why should our anniversary matter to you? because for 200 years, we've been helping ideas move from ambition to achievement. and the next great idea could be yours. ♪

in the last couple of years, a number of countries have moved towards democracy, egypt, libya, others and many historians

studied this process of democratization. just as interesting and important is how countries in the not too distant past were seduced by communism. that's the question an anne applebaum sets to explore in "iron curtain." the crushing of eastern europe. she won a pulitzer prize. for her previous book published nearly a decade ago. she's back. # welcome back, anne. >> thank you. >> when you think about building democracy in the middle east, you think about building civil society and putting in place courts and such. when you looked at this process, which i think of in some ways as a reverse process, after world war ii, what is it that the soviets and local communist parties do to create communism in eastern europe? >> one of the interesting things that i found while doing the research for this book is how similar the patterns were in these really very different countries after the war.

when the red army arrived in one of the conquered territories. it always did, three or four things that it always did right away. number one, perhaps the most obvious, was set up the secret police. number two, slightly less obvious, take over the radio station. >> why the radio station? >> because they cared about mass radio. they weren't so interested in intellectuals and people who read newspapers. >> putin i noticed he allowed newspapers to flourish in moscow and st. petersburg, but tv which reaches tens of millions he controls very tightly. >> absolutely. it's exactly the same pattern. i don't think it's an accident. the russians know this. they know this bit of history and they remember how this was done and putin was in the kgb and they would have had a memory of how to take over countries and control them. >> secret police, radio. >> and then perhaps less obvious and more surprising, elements of what we now call civil society.

so, anything that was self-organized had to immediately be taken under control. so, very early on there is attacks on the boy scouts. you wouldn't have thought that this was the red army's main priority, but, actually, it was. they are interested in the scouts and interested in young people and independent groups of all kinds. from 1945, from the time they get there. >> to what extent were the people of eastern europe complicit in this or suddenly the leaders of some of these movements. did they show courage? could they have shown courage in opposing this imposition of totalism? >> you know, in any society, there is a tiny group of people who are nasty collaborators and very cynical and maybe a tiny percent of people who are very courageous. in poland people went to fight in the woods with guns but 80% of people, though, want to move on with their lives. they want their children to go to school and they want to take care of their sick parents and

one of the, sort of the horrifying genius of communism in a way, this is true of others, too, the didn't ask that much of you. you had to do your job and maybe march in the mayday parade and maybe you had to agree to put a poster on the wall and you made these small compromises because you knew if you didn't the consequences could be very tough. people did go along with it. the downside from the regime's point of view, they went along with it reluctantly and when it started to unravel, this is part of the reason why. people did go along and they were not happy and there was a discontent. >> when people look at the middle east, they're struck by how difficult it is to build democracy and they don't have the institutions, but a lingering suspicion that they're not part of the western world. they haven't had the history and the country was often to eastern

europe and to 1989 and the idea is that, well, that happened so easily that the berlin wall fell and all these countries became good, solid democracies. is that a fair reading? >> it's not really. i mean, first of all, after '89 was not so smooth. the countries that were communist before then had very different fates and the fate of poland and the fate of albania and russia are quite different. it was more the -- in many cases actually it was the degree to which civil society and those society had been maintained or reconstructed that made the big difference between how well they recovered. >> civil society can be quite nasty itself. a lot of the most, the nastiest islamist groups in the middle east tend to be very rich, civil society organizations that provide social welfare and they happen to believe in very extreme form of islam and there are parallels in europe as well.

>> the interesting thing about islam, the islamist movements in that part of the world are at an important turning point. until now, they've had a lot of credit, if you will, and a lot of the populations put a lot of faith in them because they were the only alternative to the government. i mean, either because they were somehow tolerated or because they were able to be more powerful because they had access to mosques and better ways of organizing people. they were often the only civil society organizations that were allowed to be functioning. now that the regimes have fallen and now that there's more pluralism in these societies, it's going to be interesting. will they now, will they now participate in creating new kinds of societies where there are other kinds of groups and other kinds of groups, where other kinds of organizations are allowed to take control? or will they attempt to create a new form of authoritarianism or new form of totalitarianism? >> what's your guess?

>> i think it's going to be different in each country. >> in a sense that is part of the lesson. one often forgets in the idealized version of '89 europe. there are belarus, albania, places that have not done so well. >> there are places that have done well like poland and the czech republic. and there are places that haven't. always be careful about making a blanket statement about a region or society. libya and egypt could not be more different. egypt is a very rich society in many ways. very complex economic structure. lots of private business. many different religious groups. libya is, i was in libya few months ago, was stunned to realize there hadn't even been an official political party under gadhafi. he didn't even have a kind of fake single party. there was actually nothing. you know, in libya you're starting really from scratch. there's problemically no prit

business, very thin kind of society. completely different from egypt. and the outcomes may be totally different as well. >> we have to move on. a pleasure to have you on.

santa claus and his elves may claim the top side of the north pole much but one nation has staked its claim by placing a flag on the sea floor beneath the north pole. my question of the week is which nation's flag flies submerged in the ocean beneath the north pole? is it the united states, canada, russia or denmark? stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer, this week i have two books of the week, suggestions for your christmas gift lists they're both by an author you are familiar with.

me. if you're concerned about what's happening in the arab world these days, check out the future of freedom. about democracy everywhere. past, present, future. if you want to put the rise of china and india and others in context, pick up "the post american world" out in a new improved version. buy the books, please and make me publishers happy. now for the last look. americans are perhaps the most avid ufo fish in additioowe fis. we're not alone in thinking we're not alen. thousands of miles away, indians have started to spot the same strange bright lights. hundreds of reports on luminous objects in the night sky. some of them reported as tennis ball sized, others looking like chinese lanterns are been spotted along the india-china border. there are many who believe that lights don't represent aliens at all.

they represent chinese, satellites or drones or some apparatus to spy on india. the border between china and india remains hotly disputed and the two countries went to war over it in 196. india's defense minister has had to make a statement in recent weeks, it read in part, there is no conclusive proof of unidentified flying objects flying over the india-china border. does that mean those lights do come from china? he doesn't say. the correct answer to our gps challenge is c, in 2007, a russian submarine planted that nation's flag under the north pole. it is made of rust-proof titanium and just a few months ago, a russian orthodox bishop went and gave a special blessing to the top of the world. the russians might think they're being nice, but other nations with claims up there feel that russia's behavior is really quite naughty. don't forget viewers in the united states can catch our latest gps special tonight, it's called "tough decisions" it

examines how major decisions are made in everything from national security to business, to family affairs. it airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. eastern and pacific, don't miss it. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week, i will see you next week. hello i'm miguel marquez with a check of our top stories. the national rifle association says no to new gun laws. the group's ceo, wayne la pierre appeared on "meet the press," he said bans on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines won't help. >> look. a gun is a tool. the problem is the criminal. every police officer that walks the street knows that if you want to control violent crime, take violent criminals off the street. >> the nra wants to see existing gun laws enforced and in the aftermath of the newtown massacre. wants armed guards in schools. in